Vital Stats

22 December 2008

The Great Dig

So there were two snowstorms in a row, within three days. The first one was last Friday, where it dumped about a foot of snow, and the next one was yesterday, where it dumped quite a lot of snow again. Needless to say, it provided me with more-than-enough amounts of shoveling opportunities.

I suppose this is just surreal. Maybe, living in Buffalo qualifies me to live in Siberia, but the scenery is just bizarre. It is something that is the total opposite of the scenery in the summer, when the trees are pretty, and the sun is shining at its finest.

So yesterday, I shoveled my driveway so many times I actually lost count. I would do it every two or three hours, whenever the wind is not harsh. The thing is, I live in a two-storey house, and the house next door is of the same build, so the narrow driveway in between the two houses would be transformed into a wind tunnel of some sort, with the snow being blown in from the front of the house to the back. I noticed this wind pattern, so I avoided dumping the snow on the front yard. Instead, I dumped all the snow on the yard behind the house next door, catapulting all the snow over the fence. Hey, it's just ice, when the sun comes out, it will all melt. The question is, however, is when.

Anyway, I see my neighbors, and the piles that they have created are unbelievable. There was this one car next door, it's more like a sportscar, you know, the low-riding, sleek type, and the snow pile next to it is way higher than the car itself. I see quite a few cars getting stuck in front of my house, and in fact, most of the cars have a snow shovel in their trunk, in case they need to dig their car in order to move.

The good thing is, in a few days, the forecast for the area is a few degrees higher than freezing. That means this ice pile would hopefully melt and not be a nuisance. In fact, the forecast for this weekend is rain, not snow. Good thing, since this white matter is so annoying sometimes I really think why I chose to go to graduate school here instead of somewhere else.